At a congressional hearing today, FBI Director James Comey was asked about his comments earlier this week that the bureau may have to reassess recent marijuana use as a disqualifier for job applicants.

Comney said he was trying to be “serious and funny” about the recruiting challenge facing the bureau as young people’s attitudes toward marijuana change.

As it stands, applicants have to be pot-free for three years to be considered for jobs at the FBI.

“I have to hire a great workforce to compete with those cyber-criminals, and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview,” Comey had said during a conference Monday in New York City.

Congress has authorized the FBI to add 2,000 to its payroll this year, and many will be fighting cyber crimes, “a growing priority for the agency,” the Wall Street Journal report. “And that’s a problem, Mr. Comey told the White Collar Crime Institute, an annual conference held at the New York City Bar Association in Manhattan. A lot of the nation’s top computer programmers and hacking gurus are also fond of marijuana.”

“I am absolutely dead-set against using marijuana,” Comey said today, appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a routine oversight hearing. “I don’t want young people to use marijuana,” the government’s top cop said. “It’s against the law.”

“We have a three-year ban on marijuana,” Comey said about the FBI’s recruiting practices, “but I did not say I am going to change that ban. I said I have to grapple with the change in my workforce.”